"We are confident that it will come to fruition this year," Romulo said.
The MILF is the largest separatist Muslim group in the Philippines.
The Philippine and US governments hope that an agreement with the MILF - estimated by the military to have 13,000 members with 10,000 firearms - could transform its vast rural strongholds into economic growth hubs instead of battlefields breeding al-Qaeda-linked militants.
A massive US-backed offensive that started Aug. 1 in Jolo island has been targeting Abu Sayyaf extremist rebels who have ties to the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
Romulo said radical Islam in Southeast Asia would get stronger "if you don’t do anything about it."
"But the fact is in southeast Asia ... we are doing a lot about it, and so I think it has weakened," he said.
Fellow panelists Anwar Zainah, executive director of the Malaysian women’s rights group Sisters in Islam, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, an interfaith effort to improve relations between Americans and Muslims, agreed.
"Last year I would say stronger, but this year I would say weaker," Zainah said. "You have to challenge them — and you have to take them on publicly. That’s very important."
Rauf said as a result of widespread action to counter radical Islam, "in the Philippines, for instance, and other parts of southeast Asia I think it’s a lot weaker."
The Philippines, the only overwhelmingly Christian country in Asia aside from East Timor, signed a peace agreement in 1996 with the then biggest Muslim separatist group in the south, the Moro National Liberation Front, with the help of Indonesia.
Romulo said the government is now forging a peace agreement with the MILF, a splinter group of the MNLF.
The negotiations are chaired by Malaysia, with help from Brunei, Libya, the Organization of Islamic Conference and Japan, which is the development partner, he said.
"They’re working on the administrative structure of this peace agreement," he said.
He gave no details of the accord and the government’s latest offer.
The MILF wants an existing Muslim autonomous region in Mindanao expanded without any constitutional conditions, such as a plebiscite. The government had argued that the autonomous region could not be expanded unless residents in affected areas approve it in a plebiscite.
Romulo stressed that ending the fighting is just part of the government’s goal.
"We address the conflict issue, which is the issue of extremism, of terrorists, but we feel also that we must go to the root cause - of the unhappiness, the dissatisfaction of the Muslim minority," he said.
Romulo said the government believes there should be more dialogue with its Muslim community and has actively promoted a national, regional and international dialogue among all religions.
As a result of the 1996 peace agreement, Muslims now participate in the legislature, judiciary and executive branch and the Muslim autonomous region in the south has the second-best growth rate among the country’s 60 regions, he said.
In March 2006, the Philippines launched a new partnership of governments, UN agencies and civil society organizations to promote interfaith dialogue and peaceful co-existence at a time of growing intolerance. Romulo said at the time that the Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation and Peace would develop practical measures and promote grassroots initiatives to build bridges between faiths.
"We feel that Islam is a religion of peace and harmony and understanding," Romulo said. "So we feel that we have to understand other’s religion — that we’re all committed to peace and development."
In Davao City, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said MILF is just awaiting the advice of the Malaysian government as to when to resume the stalled peace negotiations. The talks reached an impasse in September last year due to strong disagreements over ancestral domain claims.
Malaysia, which hosts the peace negotiation, acts as a mediator between the government and the MILF.
"We understand that we still have to wait for Malaysia to say when it would be because they are the hosts of the talks," Kabalu told The STAR.
Meanwhile, MILF secretariat chief Jun Mantawil said in the Luawarn.com website that the MILF has already submitted to the government its counterproposal on how the issue on territory shall be resolved based not only on historical considerations but also on the situation on the ground considering that non-Muslims dominate in Mindanao. — Edith Regalado, AP